She made it through Chicago, and just as she drove through Toledo she realized she’d gone past the spot where her parents’ accident had happened. She turned around and headed back in the opposite direction, looking for some kind of sign to mark the spot where the truck had hit them. The driver, it turned out, had had an epileptic seizure, and had died, too. It was hard to be mad. It was tragic, that was all.

She pulled to the side of the freeway and broke down so completely while cars whipped past that she felt as if her veins had been scraped out by grief. It wasn’t just her parents she cried over: she cried for Brad, for the end of an era with her house in Milwaukee, for the feeling she had that she’d never be able to return to her old life, for the loss of family, for not having a center, for being a fucked-up, commitment-phobic betrayer of family and friends. She was so caught up in her crying spell that she didn’t see the cop pull up behind her, and startled when he rapped on her window.

“You OK?”

Poppy wiped her face with the back of her jacket sleeve. “No.”

He was an older cop, probably in his sixties, and he seemed awkward about confronting a tearful young woman. “It’s not safe here. You should use your hazards. Better yet, pull off at the exit.”

“Sorry.” Her tears caught in her throat. “I’ll leave.”

She thought he was about to hand her a ticket, but he passed her a tissue instead. “Your registration is expired, did you know that?”

“No. Really? I don’t pay attention to any of the right stuff. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He patted the top of the car as if he could pat her on top of her head. “I’ll let it go for now. But in the future, find a safer place to cry. And get those tags renewed.”

She was facing west instead of east now, and thought about going back to Milwaukee, but the pull to the Cape was too strong. She felt it every spring, no matter where in the world she was living. She could practically hear the terns, plovers, and barn swallows, smell the heady scent of sulfur and peat of the cove, feel the damp sand at the shore of Gull Pond, and taste the oysters and lobster rolls. This impulse to migrate back to a familiar place was troubling. She’d always defined herself as someone who could continually expand outward, never needing to return.